Fundamentals of Chiropractic

Book Review by Steven Lavitan, DC, LAc

Title:

Fundamentals of Chiropractic

Author:

Daniel Redwood, DC, and Carl S. Cleveland III, DC

Publisher:

Mosby, 2003

Type:

Softcover, 700 pages

Price:

$54.95

Part #:

T-500

Drs. Daniel Redwood and Carl Cleveland III have edited the most thorough anthology on chiropractic to date. Each chapter's author is an authority in his or her own way, and the aggregate provide a wonderful panorama of chiropractic. If this book - 30 chapters and 700 pages - truly is the fundamentals of chiropractic, the advanced version must be the size of an encyclopedia.

Thirty years ago, Dr. Joseph Janse started my orientation at the National College of Chiropractic with Victor's Hugo's quote, "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has arrived." After reading this book, I realize that time may be now.

The following are a series of highlights from Fundamentals of Chiropractic:

All chiropractors use respiration in some form to effect an adjustment, but eye motion can also help. Eye movements, coordinated in the direction the head moves, allow spinal muscle to relax, facilitating gentler, easier adjustments.

A retrospective study on maintenance care (a minimum of four visits per year for five years) of patients older than age 65 revealed average annual health care expenditures of $3,106, versus $10,041 for other seniors.

Peripheral nerve root entrapment is far more common than spinal nerve root entrapment. Probably the most common is a traction neurodesis caused by fibrosis tissue losing its gliding function. Some of these nerve excursions are considerable, often in multiples of centimeters.

Internal validity is the degree to which the results of a study are correct. A study without internal validity is meaningless. External validity is the degree to which a study holds true in settings other than the study setting. The Mead study is the classic external validity study because it allowed the British chiropractors and the physical therapists to do their normal procedures; it just judged the results. Unfortunately, this leaves it open to the criticism that the greater attention and rapport chiropractors give may account for the difference.

Visceral research discusses respiration as a visceral function that depends on the skeletal system to make inspiration and expiration possible. Even if a connection between chiropractic and lung tissue is never made, the improvement of the muscle tone is a worthwhile goal. Improvement in lung capacity has untold implications, not the least of which is that decreased lung capacity is a marker of aging.

A cervical adjustment has the attendant risk, actuarially speaking, of 1.1 miles driven. In other words, a patient driving 2.2 miles to your office has twice the odds of being injured during the trip than while getting his or her neck corrected.

According to Dr. McAndrews, the Mercy Guidelines were an important ingredient for the AHCPR recommendations being as positive as they were toward chiropractic.

For the serious student of chiropractic, Fundamentals of Chiropractic is a 10. In this reviewer's opinion, this may be the most important book on chiropractic published in the past decade.

Dr. Lavitan's rating:

10 out of 10